Wednesday, January 2, 2013

ALL women Rule

From Congress to Halls of State, in New Hampshire, Women Rule

Jim Cole/Associated Press

The five women holding New
Hampshire’s top political offices gathered at a forum on Dec. 7. From
left, Maggie Hassan, the governor-elect; Ann McLane Kuster and Carol
Shea-Porter, elected to the House of Representatives; and Senators Kelly
Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen.

Most states are red or blue. A few are purple. After the November election, New Hampshire turned pink.

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Women won the state’s two Congressional seats. Women already held the
state’s two Senate seats. When they are all sworn into office on
Thursday, New Hampshire will become the first state in the nation’s
history to send an all-female delegation to Washington.

And the matriarchy does not end there. New Hampshire’s new governor is a
woman. So are the speaker of the State House and the chief justice of
the State Supreme Court.

“Pink is the new power color in New Hampshire,” declared Ann McLane
Kuster, one of the newly elected representatives, at a recent forum at
the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester, where the women’s historic milestone was celebrated.

These women did not rise to the top together overnight. Nor was there an
orchestrated movement to elect them. Each toiled in the political
vineyards, climbed the ladder in her own time and campaigned hard for
her job. But they have caught the state’s collective imagination,
inspiring forums and media interest and prompting Jay B. Childs, a New
Hampshire filmmaker, to make a documentary about them.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen,
65, a Democrat and dean of the delegation, was the state’s first
elected female governor and the first woman in United States history to
be elected both governor and senator.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, 44, a Republican, was the state’s former attorney general.

Carol Shea-Porter, 60, a Democrat and former member of the House, lost her seat in 2010 and won it back in November.

Ms. Kuster, 56, a Democrat, is a lawyer and lobbyist who has not held
office before but has long been active in the state and comes from a
political family.

Maggie Hassan, 54, a Democrat and the new governor, was majority leader of the State Senate.

Women will make up 20 percent of the new Senate and 17.9 percent of the
new House. These are records in Washington, but they fall far short of
matching the 50.8 percent of the general population that is female.

While New Hampshire is doing more than its share of bolstering the
number of women on Capitol Hill, six states — Alaska, Delaware, Iowa,
Mississippi, North Dakota and Vermont — have never elected a woman to
the House. And four of those — Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi and Vermont —
have never sent a woman to the Senate.

The state after New Hampshire, with the next highest proportion of women
in its Congressional delegation, is Hawaii, where both House members
and one senator are women.

In only three other states, Maine, Missouri and Washington, do women
make up at least half of the delegations. Sixteen states, including New
Jersey, have no women in Congress.

Although the women in New Hampshire are serving all at once by
happenstance, women have long held prominent positions in New Hampshire
government.

One reason is the size of the State House, a typical pipeline for
aspiring politicians. It has 400 members, making it the largest of the
states and the fourth-largest governing body in the English-speaking
world (after the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the
Indian Parliament). With so many seats available, women have a better
chance of being elected in New Hampshire than they have in many other
states.

New Hampshire also has a long history of volunteerism, and serving in
the General Court, as the legislature is known, amounts to an act of
volunteerism because it pays just $100 a year, plus mileage. Every year
since 1975, more than 100 women have served.

“There are lots of opportunities for women to pitch in, prove their
competence and learn a lot about governing and the political process,”
Ms. Hassan said in an interview. “We’ve had a very deep bench of women.”

Even if the legislature in New Hampshire is big, the state itself is
small. That makes it easier for everyone to know everyone else, and most
of the women in the Congressional delegation have intricate ties to one
another.

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I am an entrepreneur. I have owned a grocery store, restaurant, published a weekly periodical, owned a video store chain, run a coffee-sandwich shop, and have extensive experience in real estate (sales, development, & as a general contractor). Over the last few years, I worked as preservationist of a historical property (rehabing an 1864 mill building). Founder, President of India Museum and Heritage Society in Providence. Past President of India Association of RI. Past Member Heritage Harbor Museum Board.
New England Republican Council.